Okay, okay. Yeesh, I need to explain myself better.
Let me clarify that I would
not in any way be advocating the imperial system over the metric system in any circumstance. In fact, to call imperial units a system is much too generous. Imperial units is a religion. It was passed to my generation from a previous one and to them from a previous one and so on with no rational other than "because that's the way it is". If I was raised with the metric system as my sole tool for measurement, then I would be arguing along side everyone else here, and I would have a much easier time doing so.
There certainly is no contest as to which convention is more convenient for calculations; there's proof in the fact that every single science and engineering class I have ever taken in my life used metric units. I know that the members of this forum are a group of scientifically minded people, to whom calculations are a regular practice, and the convenience of the metric system is all important. However, for the general population, of whom the vast majority possess no more than a high school diploma (U.S. public school system, mind you), calculations are not a regular exercise. In addition, much construction work is guided by rules of thumb and established practices rather than formalized mathematics.
What I wanted to get across is that however stupid our units may seem, they are perfectly capable of communication measurements with little ambiguity, at least intranationally. Trading miles for kilometers, feet and yards for meters, and inches for centimeters simply offers no advantage to the majority of Americans. This is why every intent to switch to metric has been a complete failure.
My belief is that we will be entrenched in our imperial units hole until our Chinese overlords take over in which case we'll use whatever they have.